Subjectivity and Transcendence

doi:10.1628/978-3-16-167096-1

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Subjectivity and Transcendence

Edited by Arne Grøn, Soren Overgaard and Iben Damgaard

2007. 263 pages. Unrevised ebook edition 2025.

Religion in Philosophy and Theology (RPT) 25

DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-167096-1

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Summary

How may we combine an account of subjective life, which respects its interiority, and at the same time view subjective life as opening up to something that transcends it? Despite the fact that the problem of subjectivity and transcendence is central to modern philosophy and theology, this book is the first to make it the object of detailed and multifaceted discussion.

Modern philosophy begins with Descartes' discovery of an apparently indubitable realm of subjectivity. The Cartesian approach confronts philosophy with the problem of transcendence: At the same time as we appear to have secured an immanent realm of subjectivity, it becomes a problem how we can establish the existence of something outside this realm. What could possibly force - or even motivate - a subject, in possession of itself, to recognize a God, a world, or a peer outside itself? Thus, Descartes' philosophical legacy is a problem rather than a solution: the problem of subjectivity and transcendence. How is it possible to combine a post-Cartesian emphasis on subjectivity with a strong conception of transcendence? What notions of subjectivity and transcendence will we have to commit ourselves to? Despite the fact that the problem is central to modern philosophy and theology, no single volume has so far been dedicated to the problem of subjectivity and transcendence. This volume thus fills an important gap. The 12 chapters address the problem of subjectivity and transcendence from a variety of different perspectives: historical, philosophical, theological, and psychopathological.

Contents:
Arne Grøn and Søren Overgaard: Introduction - Arne Grøn: Subjectivity and Transcendence: Problems and Perspectives - Ingolf U. Dalferth: Beyond Understanding? Transcending Our Limits and the Limits of Our Transcending - Josef Parnas: Subjectivity in Schizophrenia: The Minimal Self is too Small - Merold Westphal: Intentionality and Transcendence - Søren Overgaard: In Defense of Subjectivity: Husserl, Levinas, and the Problem of Solipsism - Henrik Vase Frandsen: Transcendence of the Appeal - Sovereignty of the Subject - Dan Zahavi: Subjectivity and Immanence in Michel Henry - Claudia Welz: The Presence of the Transcendent - Transcending the Present? Kierkegaard and Levinas on Subjectivity and the Ambiguity of God's Transcendence - Iben Damgaard: Passion for the Possible: A Kierkegaardian Approach to Subjectivity and Transcendence - George Pattison: Desire, Decreation and Unknowing in the God-Relationship: Mystical Theology and its Transformation in Kierkegaard, Simone Weil and Dostoevsky - Caspar Wenzel Tornøe: God and the Demiurge: Subjectivity and Transcendence from a Theological Perspective - Saskia Wendel: The Emergence of Transcendence in Self-Consciousness: Towards a Rehabilitation of a Transcendental Position of Philosophy of Religion

Authors/Editors

Arne Grøn (1952-2025) Mag. Art. in Philosophy. Dr. theol.; 1997-2017 Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion, University of Copenhagen; 2002 Professor at and Co-founder of Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen, Denmark; 2015-2017 Director of the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, University of Copenhagen.

Soren Overgaard Born 1973; Ph.D. in Philosophy; Research Councils UK Fellow and Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Hull, United Kingdom.

Iben Damgaard Born 1973; Ph.D in Ethics and Philosophy of Religion, Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen; Assistant Professor in Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Theology, University of Aarhus, Denmark.